How to Capture SQRs With Your Phone

SQR is a free cell phone puzzles and strategy game for one or two players.

One of the most innovative aspects of SQR is that it allows players to add game data to the phone for free, either via Bluetooth or by using the camera. This instructable shows how this is done.

This is how a character stats chart looks in game. Next to it you can see a code that, when properly captured with the phone, will add that character to your collection:

In order to capture a SQR, you have to take a snapshot of the code below -that's all there is to it(1). After you take the snapshot, the game will analyze the code and will tell you if you did correctly or you have to try again.

(1)You need to do this from within the game, that is.

From our own tests we have found that, depending on the phone and user involved, feedback ranges from "piece of cake!" to "my pulse needs to be as steady as a sniper's"(2). What follows are some pictures showing codes being captured on two different phones, a Nokia N70 and a Sony Ericsson Z530i.

Though there's no rule that grants a proper capture every time, you should try keeping the phone as parallel to the image as possible. Yawning, rolling or pitching the phone too much will create distortions on the image that render the capture unreadable by the game.

(2)This variability is unavoidable, alas!

This is how the codes look after being generated. Ideally they should look like these on the phone's screen for a perfect capture.

Now we'll show examples of how the codes actually look like in the phone's screen when making captures. The two first pictures from the left show the kind of capture that will work almost every time; the two pictures on the right show the kind of capture that fails almost every time.

Finally, some examples of SQR stats pages, as you'll see them in the phone :)